A classic of Turkish literature, originally published in 1955, this novel won the Varlik Prize, the highest literature award of Turkey

Memed grows up a serf to a vicious overlord on the thistle-clad plains of Turkey’s Taurus region. When his plan to escape is dashed, and the young woman he loves murdered, Memed makes for the mountains to become an outlaw. Before long he has transformed from a young rebel to an infamous bandit, the scourge of corrupt oppressors and hero to the poor. With vividness and simplicity, Kemal's classic novel evokes the fierce beauty of his country and the struggles of its oppressed people.

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It has that insiders feelings for man, the oppressed, labouring animal ... you might find in Tolstoy, Hardy or Silone. The author never loses his freshness, an ability to pick on details as though see for the first time.
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Guardian

“
Yasham Kemal achieves the Russian quality - an intimacy of detail which makes his etching indelible, more selected, and therefore more obvious than life ... the book is a small, sharp, moving epic of Turkish soil
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Sunday Telegraph

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'Here again is that directness and that fierce poetry which one knew in the old heroic stories, and a hero in whom one can have such faith and trust that one can bear to read his torments knowing that he is strong enough to endure them. This is a beautiful and passionate book. It has been most ably translated'.
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Glasgow Herald

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One of the great modern epics
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Observer

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[Kemal was] trying to find, to create, in his own country, a language for millions and millions of people whom no one's ever heard of, whom no one has ever spoken for, and who cannot speak
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James Baldwin

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'A remarkable novel, reminiscent of Hardy in its power and scope'.
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